The painting by the painter Toyen entitled Serenade, which dates from 1924, was sold at an auction in Prague for 49 million crowns, including an auction surcharge. Another work by the author, entitled Breathing Sleep, which she painted in the post-war period, found a buyer at a cost of 18.15 million crowns, said Kateřina Sokolová, on behalf of the organizing company Adolf Loos Apartment and Gallery. The company held its first auction at its new headquarters in the former Expo restaurant in Letenské sady and sold most of the items on it.
The serenade comes from the author’s rare and collectible creative period, which art historians call naive. The work was long unknown to the public, the last time it was presented at the 1926 exhibition in Paris, according to the auction hall.
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In addition to the Serenade, collectors were offered the Toyen Breathing Sleep screen from 1958 with a starting price of eight million crowns, which was sold at a price ten million higher, and an erotic drawing from 1932. It started at 1.25 million crowns.
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Twenty-six-year-old Manka Čermínová. She did not deal with female beauty, even though she was rich.
Photo: Toyen exhibition, dreaming rebel – Milan Malíček, Právo
The auction offers over a hundred works by authors from the 19th century, classical modernism and contemporary creators. The oil of František Kupka On the Bank of the Marne from 1895 is also auctioned. The painting is an example of what Kupka’s early works looked like. He went to the auction with a starting price of 3.8 million crowns. The auction catalog offered several works by Josef Šíma, paintings by Antonín Chittussi, Bedřich Havránek, Josef Navrátil and Antonín Slavíček. The auction will offer works by Jiří Kolář and Běla Kolářová, coming directly from the collection of Běla and Jiří Kolářová.
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The Expo 58 building is one of the most visible memories of the World’s Fair in Brussels in 1958, where Czechoslovakia celebrated great success. The building was moved to Prague after the exhibition. The busy restaurant did not live its second life too long, it was auctioned off in the 1990s and then changed owners several times and fell into disrepair. Since the beginning of the new millennium, it has been the seat of an advertising agency, part of which is still inhabited by a company dealing with start-ups.
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